MANUFACTURING
LED sales forecast to jump
Total revenues of Taiwanese light-emitting diode (LED) companies are expected to grow this year on the back of a growing lighting market, according to a market information advisory firm. Taiwanese LED companies will have combined sales of NT$28.05 billion (US$937.04 million) in the second half of the year, up 11.9 percent from the first half, Digitimes Research said. Full-year revenues of these companies are expected to total NT$53.11 billion, up 16.8 percent from last year, the firm added. Digitimes urged local LED chipmakers to shift focus from LED TVs to the lighting market, in which more business opportunity lies. The global market penetration rate of LED TVs is more than 90 percent this year and has little room to grow, while that of LED lighting is only 18.4 percent and has much greater potential, Digitimes said. According to Digitimes’ forecast, revenues in the LED lighting sector will grow 35.3 percent to NT$10.07 billion in the second half of this year, exceeding NT$8.61 bilion in sales from LED chips used in televisions.
BUSINESS
Brand forum draws experts
Foreign experts will visit Taipei later this month for a two-day forum, the Taiwan International Branding Forum, to be held from July 30. The forum builds on Taiwan’s attempts to build up local products and companies into globally recognized brands in recent years. World-renowned thought-leader and advisor Martin Roll is scheduled to talk about how to grasp business opportunities in Asia and Caspian Smith, director of the Brand System & Workforce Enablement under IBM Growth Markets, will also give a talk at the forum.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy